This invention relates to a traffic monitoring system and method. More particularly, this invention relates to a traffic monitoring system and method utilizing wireless communications to provide traffic information.
Increased traffic congestion is an ever increasing problem in major urban areas. Traffic congestion has an adverse effect on the environment and adds stress to peoples"" daily lives. It is important that traffic engineers have accurate information regarding traffic. Accurate traffic information allows traffic engineers to pin point problem areas, find long term solutions to traffic problems, and provide drivers with accurate near real time information to avoid problems. Several traffic monitoring systems and methods currently exist.
Some of the current traffic monitoring systems are crude stand alone devices that merely count the number of cars that pass over a sensor. In order to gather any information from these devices a person must go out to the device and read the counter at the location, or take the device from the location where the counter can be read. Such devices do not provide real time information. Moreover, such devices do not provide any sort of error detection to alert traffic engineers if the device is malfunctioning.
Other traffic monitoring systems are configured to provide real time or near real time information. Such systems typically comprise remote traffic monitoring units that communicate in some way with a central station. In some of the prior art systems the remote units are hardwired, such as through telephone lines, to a central station. As such, the remote units of these systems are typically permanently fixed to a location and are not easily moved. These devices are typically xe2x80x9cdumbxe2x80x9d monitoring devices with no localized processing capability. Moreover, these devices typically do not monitor roadway temperature or other roadway conditions and do not have the capability to record traffic for specified pre-determined periods.
Some prior art systems exist that utilize cellular or radio transmission to communicate from the remote monitoring devices to a central station. With these cellular systems, the voice channels are typically used to transmit monitored data. Such systems use up valuable space on the voice channels and depending on the size of the system may require additional capacity to be added to the cellular system. The systems that utilize radio transmission require that a radio network be built to accommodate the system. As such, both of these methods of transmission are expensive to implement.
The present invention overcomes the above problems by providing a system and method for gathering and sending monitored traffic data via a short messaging system message over a wireless network through a publicly switched telephone network (xe2x80x9cPSTNxe2x80x9d) to a central computer. A remote traffic monitoring unit acts as a data collection device collecting data regarding the traffic count and other conditions at its particular location. The remote traffic monitoring unit can monitor different types of trafficxe2x80x94for example, motor vehicles, trains, and pedestrians. The system routes data messages including monitored traffic count data from the remote traffic monitoring unit to a central computer and routes control information from the central computer to the remote traffic monitoring unit.
A system of the present invention for maintaining count data of traffic at a remote location and capable of collecting the count data includes a remote traffic monitoring device adapted to gather traffic count data, format the traffic count data into a short message service message, and transmit the short message service message via a wireless transmission; and a central computer for receiving the traffic count data from the remote traffic monitoring device.
A remote traffic monitoring device of the present invention includes a first object sensing device adapted to generate a signal representing the presence of the object; a first counting device coupled to the object sensing device, the counting device adapted to maintain count data, receive the signal representing the presence of the object from the sensing device, and increment the count data for each signal received from the sensing device; a processor coupled to the counting device, the processor adapted to receive the count data from the counting device and assemble the count data in a short message service message; and a wireless telephone transceiver coupled to the processor, the transceiver adapted to receive the short message service message from the processor and transmit the short message service message. In the preferred embodiment, the transceiver is a Personal Communication System transceiver. The remote monitoring device can also include a temperature sensing device to generate temperature data to be included in the short messaging service message. The remote monitoring device can also include a water level monitoring device to generate water level data to be included in the short messaging service message.
A method of the present invention for collecting traffic count data within a system having a remote traffic monitoring device and a central computer includes sensing the presence of an object to be counted; generating a signal representative of the sensing of the object; incrementing traffic count data upon the detection of the signal; and formatting traffic count data into a short message service format. The method can also include transmitting the short message service message to the central computer.